Different approaches to teaching language

Presentation-Practice-Production, or PPP, is a well-established approach to teaching language. In the first stage, teachers create a situation or context, and then use this to convey the meaning, form and pronunciation of the target language to their students. This approach is best suited to teaching target language which is likely to be completely new to the students, so it is often used with beginner or elementary levels.

A Test-Teach-Test approach is useful when teachers are confident that the students have seen at least some of the target language before. With careful planning and intensive monitoring, teachers can gauge how much the students know about the target language during the first ‘test’ stage, and then adapt the rest of their lesson accordingly.

Teaching language from a text or adopting a Text-Based approach to teaching language works well with all levels, although it is especially common in coursebooks geared towards intermediate or advanced level students. First, students complete comprehension tasks on a reading or listening text, and then the teacher draws the target language from the text and clarifies the key elements.

When students can see the target language embedded in meaningful text, teachers can adopt a student-centred approach to the language clarification stage. Setting tasks which encourage students to examine language in context and work out the meaning and form for themselves is known as a Guided Discovery approach. Research has shown that language taught in this way is more memorable for students.